


woods that aren’t ours

by deuklore



Category: Dreamcatcher (Korea Band)
Genre: #hugging, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Winter, huddle for warmth, lowkey skinny dipping, self-indulgent bullshit, suyoo - Freeform, valkyrie!bora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27416011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuklore/pseuds/deuklore
Summary: i recommend listening to ‘the lakes’ by taylor swift while reading!
Relationships: Kim Bora | SuA/Kim Yoohyeon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	woods that aren’t ours

**Author's Note:**

> i recommend listening to ‘the lakes’ by taylor swift while reading!

I couldn’t be bothered by my drenched clothes by the time I reached the top of the familiar hill only 30 trees away from my dad’s lonely cottage. With my pace slowing down, I started feeling the wet grass sneaking in between my toes despite the heavy presence of the rain that illuminated any other sound and feel and smell. My hands trembled and I imagined swallowing them whole because occasionally brushing my knuckles to my open mouth wasn’t working to bring me warmth in the slightest.

My dad wouldn’t like the sight of me, even more because he personally braided my hair into two the last time I saw him and no such braids shaped my hair anymore. But I couldn’t worry because the last time I saw him was last night. I suspect he walked out of the cottage shortly after he closed the door to my room and I was sleepy enough to ignore the noises of his leave. It didn’t matter though; he’ll be back soon enough, I was just bewildered by his choice of leaving someone with me.

Not a friend, and certainly not a babysitter because oh I was sure he needed that on his journey more than I did here. With me in the near woods was that fairy he was granted by the almighty Gods. A prize for him, or something, a punishment for her and a mere bad example for myself, really. If I was his parent I would not encourage him to be around such a rebellious person, stripped from her job for whatever hideous thing she did against the Gods’ orders and looking ever so carefree out of their reach, as if finally tasting freedom. But a being with a purpose like hers, or what was hers, had all the freedom anyone could ask for, as far as I knew.

But as I criticised the little I knew about her, I realised that he wasn’t too different. Apparently my dad had faked his thanks for the Gods for giving him such a big prize and only accepted to receive her to avoid seeming odd. Second marriage was out of the question for someone like him, and he told me that he sensed the fairy’s displeasure with her fate the moment she saw him. He let her free of it immediately after they left.

Which kind of moved me, you could say.

As well as the question: what was she still doing here? It moved me out of my home, to look for her and ask. I knew she was still quite present and she would be back to our cottage by the end of the night. 

The river in the afternoon was usually steady and unmoving, but this time it was loud and dotted; the doing of the raindrops that hadn’t stopped striking it for hours. I walked to the riverbanks and halted. Her hair was enough to identify her for she always had it pinned with a golden butterfly crown, some kind of jewelry on her head. Although the fact that she didn’t remove it even when she stood neck-deep in the water made me genuinely wonder about the possibility of it growing from her scalp rather than being manually attached to her hairs.

I waited for her to turn around, after sensing my presence even with how far she swam from this side of the shoreline. Who knows what superpowers her body still holds? She could probably also tell how long I’ve been standing there, or hear my erratic heartbeat from that distance. 

I waited longer, additional thoughts about her and what she could’ve been filling my mind, eventually erasing the memory of the reason I went after her in the first place. I waited some more because even after a week of meeting her she didn’t look any less of the stranger that she was when my dad had her walk in my room to say hello. Or so she told me. 

While I could pretend to not know her and go back to my life from a week ago, I chose to follow her into woods that aren’t ours, just close. Why _did_ I believe this wasn’t her leaving?

Brunette strands of hair, darkened by the involvement of water, slid off her shoulders as her bare arms rose up and settled above her head, her wrists were crossed and decorated with more jewellery. She didn’t look surprised when she finally turned her head toward me, but I still managed to feel like a prying intruder. Her normally brown eyes now glowed hazel and I wondered if there was a golden dot on my forehead.

There could very much be. But I wasn’t afraid of the thought of being a target at that moment, I was only curious. So goddamn curious about so many things, like if she could knock the air out of my lungs from there.

“Swimming?” I asked, and could only hope I was heard.

She nodded and after a questionable moment of silence I was faced with her back again. Her hands dropped into the water again, and rose up again, and again. Running through her wet hair, nails scratching her neck. All visible because the rain took mercy and allowed it.

“How are you bearing the cold?”

She laughed, lightly. “I wish I could feel it.”

“How can you not?” 

“Hm,” she was suddenly a meter closer, although she didn’t seem to be pushing forward. I didn’t know how deep the water was, never have I ever dared to swim in it, really, but I could assume the ground was reachable. Her voice became clearer as she continued, “You can ask the Gods, because this body is almost not mine.”

Her words were not making sense to me, nor the loathful tone she pronounced them with. So I kept silent, as she parted her lips to let out more accusations against the Gods, I thought. But it turned out she had enough of that and her new fixation was _my_ body. My ruined clothes, my violable shoulders that were left bare because I wore a heavy wet pullover on my torso. I shivered; the doing of her speculative gaze or the iciness of the air, I wasn’t sure.

“Did you need something, Yoohyeon?” The letters of my name alienly rolled out of her mouth, in a way that I have never heard before.

I only ever heard it from my dad, and occasional guests that stayed long enough to know how to say it. Usually more than one week. They were old enough to be ruffling my hair and pulling my cheeks, significantly different from her case. She never stopped me in my tracks, never crept up on me in the only room I ever felt alone. She treated my existence like the figure of the shadow that she was, and my residence as mine. I didn’t feel like the irrelevant daughter of my dad when she was around, let alone a kid.

I wasn’t a kid. I was as old as how my mother had been when they shared a creaky bed and I was born. But no one would ever pay attention to that. For anyone else I was still barely fifteen.

I never met a fairy before her, so I assumed she said my name in a way that a fairy would.

I shook my head no.

“You’ve never done this, it’s a pity.” Her neck bent to the side, while her fingers carefully traced the surface of the water. “You have this place as your front garden yet you always stood there, never more.”

“What?”

“Join me,” she said. The pitch of her voice picked up in the middle, her eyebrows rose unsurely. “Is what I’m saying.”

“The weather’s not warm. I couldn’t–”

“Didn’t you realise it never is here?” Her eyes briefly met the crying sky, unblinking, abnormally. She dropped them back to me. “Go on.”

“N-Nothing.” I stuttered.

Lip caught between her teeth, she drew nearer, and I could shamefully catch the slight curve that shaped her chest during the movement.

For Gods’ sake, how? It’s true I never stepped past the shoreline but I knew how biting it was, how painful it would be against fragile skin. But maybe she was coldness herself. After realising her nakedness, I wanted nothing more than to run back to the box of garments I slid under my bed and get dressed until I felt myself suffocating.

“I can keep you warm.” 

“How?” I found myself eagerly asking. “You’re not going to get me lightning-stricken, are you?”

She lets out a pretty sound in the form of a laugh. “It seems I’ve convinced you already. We can get to that later.”

I gave a nod and let her watch as I bent down to cuff my pants. I rolled the heavy ends upwards quite slowly to earn myself some time, shuddering once I felt the first breeze of air come in contact with the sensitive skin of my reddened ankles.

Daylight wasn’t gone yet and I held onto that relief as I plodded towards the middle, because it wasn’t just the temperature that intimidated me about the water. In spite of the tremors running through my body, I managed to lift my arms above the surface and helped myself to finally reach her. She did not budge, not even by the waves I’ve caused.

A smile tugged on her lips and right then I could swear I felt a bit of warmth fill my chest, but I doubt that was what she meant. Shortly after she turned away and fingers reached for hair again. Interlocking, smoothing and letting it drop on her back. I gulped.

“Why were you given to my dad?” The question was out before I knew it. He ignored me most of the time, usually not on purpose. But when I asked about that, or my mother, or where he heads out to every other night, he wore his feelings on his sleeve. And still ignored me.

“By the looks you used to give me, I assumed he told you all about it.” 

“I know you refused to comply to the Gods’ commands. What commands are those that fairies like you have to obey?” My own breath cut me off a lot, hitching after each word I let out.

“Fairy?” I heard her whisper, nose scrunching up in amusement. Then she looked at me. “I didn’t refuse, no. I liked the job; jumping from a battlefield to another, compiling lifeless bodies together and reaching out a helping hand to the warriors’ souls, one by one.”

I was listening but she stopped and gave me a bored look. “But you’re too naive to know the rest, aren’t you? You don’t believe even the Gods can be cruel and mistaken. Just like the Gods themselves.”

I had my questions, but no courage to present them. Bad example, I repeated. _Bad example_.

I wanted to think about my dad and his lectures, but I thought of him enough already. I’ve grown and I could start revealing every truth he hid, and she could be my source, and even if I bored her, I wanted to talk about it. But words never escaped past my lips.

Staring into the reflective water below, I hugged myself tighter and hoped I could have a little of that peace of mind that she seemed to get from swimming here for hours.

I heard that pretty sound again. “Need me already?”

I looked up. “Whatever do you mean?” 

The safe distance between us decreased as she approached. The river danced making me tremble and upon that I remembered.

I cleared my throat. “I’m fine, I… unless you’d do it by connecting our indexes and delivering electric shocks into my veins...”

“Let me guess, you think I can read your mind too?”

“Fairies can’t do that.”

“I’m not a fairy.”

She arrived just inches away from me, and I wished we were standing on that shoreline where I could tower over her, because that used to bring me some sort of satisfaction. To know that she wasn’t above me in absolutely everything, because I was a human and she was whatever she was, felt good. Now it just sounds childish.

“It’s quite uncomplicated. I just have to wrap my arms around you and soon enough you’ll feel better. Like… normal human beings.” She reached for the hem of my collar. “Although it wouldn’t be sufficient with this soaked thing on.”

My mouth opened, she paid attention.

“Uh..” There was no room for contemplation, as her eyes declared. “Okay.”

She was patient until the piece of cloth was over my head, then she dropped it for the river to carry, knowing it wouldn’t stray too far. Relief poured through me more than bashfulness, and I wished I could be rid of the rest as well. But I took that thought back immediately.

I looked into dazed eyes, I found it compelling how they traveled from my neck to below my collarbones where the surface just barely reached, to her slow hands rubbing on my shoulders, and to my own dark irises.Then backtracked.

“I need a bit of time.” She breathed against my lips. Our noses touched and only I looked up.

Maybe I was imagining it but her exhales were shaky and her fingers when she wrapped them around the back of my neck, cold. I was pulled with that wariness that twisted my insides and caged my breath inside my mouth. When skin met skin, I felt that electric shock nonetheless, ignited from the center of my beating heart. Splitting and separating to aid the rest of me, down to my solid toes.

While she caressed my nape, I desired to secure her waist with arms that no longer shook. She flinched, I felt her flinch, but when my regretful hands retreated she pushed into me and I had nowhere to put them other than on her sides.

My dad wouldn’t like the sight of me. But then too, I couldn’t worry. Because maybe she was sent to me. Or just, really, to her freedom.


End file.
